So, just how competitive were we?
Let me tell you a story that even Jack has likely never heard. Jack and I both, I think, have been pretty receptive to the idea of signing autographs, even as it has become so much more commercial. I was in Washington, D.C., some years ago, and someone handed me a memorabilia catalogue. I started flipping through it, and I saw that there was a listing for a golf ball, signed personally by yours truly, for $48.50. Well, you probably can guess what I did next. I looked up the asking price for an item signed by Jack. And his golf ball was 60 bucks. I figured, hell, he just didn’t sign as many golf balls. But that gives you an insight into our psychology throughout our lives.
To this day we are friends and remain in contact with each other. He and Barbara were there for me when Winnie died, and in 2012, when I received the Congressional Gold Medal, Jack was good enough to attend the ceremony and offer some very nice remarks on my behalf. We have both said this: if one of us needs something, the other would be there for him.
But let me stress this point: from the earliest time in my competition with Jack I thought that our rivalry would last forever. So far, I haven’t been proven wrong. And our friendship has stood the test of time, too.
STARDOM
PEOPLE MIGHT THINK THAT “STARDOM,” for lack of a better word, was easy for me. It really was not. I never really got used to the idea of being a star, if you will. And then there were the responsibilities that came with it. It was a lot of hard work, a lot of sacrifice.
And I can tell you without hesitation that it was all worth it. Sure, you make sacrifices, but that’s simply part of the deal. When you accept all of the accolades and the perks that go with the job, then there has to be something you give up in return. Mostly, it’s your time.
I can remember sitting down with Curtis Strange in the late 1980s when Curtis was the top player in the world. I was pretty close to Curtis’s late father, Tom, and Curtis, who, like me, went to Wake Forest University, wanted to confide in me the troubles he was having. I was happy to try to help him, but he wasn’t having any trouble, per se. He was just finding it difficult dealing with all the responsibilities that came with being a top professional golfer: signing autographs, dealing with sponsors, talking to the media.
After listening to Curtis for a while, I shrugged and told him, “You don’t have to do any of that if you don’t want to.” Curtis was stunned. “How do I not do any of that?” he said.
“Just go home,” I told him flatly. “Don’t get paid to play golf for a living. Don’t take money from sponsors. Don’t get paid to wear a shirt or a hat or play with a certain kind of golf club or golf ball. Just give all that back and go home. Then you don’t have to do any of that anymore.”
About ten years later, when Tiger Woods came along and just swept up the sports world with his talent, he and I had a similar discussion in the champions’ locker room at Augusta National Golf Club. “Tigermania” was just beginning. He had a lot of pressure on him, a lot of people pulling him in different directions. He knew I’d understand.
“It’s not fair,” Tiger said to me over lunch. “I can’t be a normal twenty-one-year-old.” In short, he resented the obligations of fame. But he sure didn’t resent the many advantages and opportunities that came with it. So I told him he was right, that he wasn’t a normal twenty-one-year-old.
“Normal twenty-one-year-olds don’t have fifty million dollars in the bank,” I remarked. “If you want to be a normal twenty-one-year-old, that’s fine; just give the money back.”
This is a conversation that I’ve had a few other times since then. I’ve always tried to tell the younger guys that if they want the perks of stardom, they have to accept the responsibilities, too. Everyone wants to make the money, to be adored and cheered, to be treated special everywhere they go. It’s understandable. It’s fun. And it’s pretty soothing to the ego. But you can’t just go through life taking. At some point you have to give, and what we’re asked to give isn’t very hard to give. I never found it difficult.
And, frankly, I can’t imagine why anyone would find it difficult when the payoff is so enjoyable.
PINE VALLEY
I FIRST EARNED MONEY on the golf course when I was eight years old. Because I could hit the ball more than 150 yards in the air, I was presented with a regular business proposition that provided me with a steady stream of movie money. I would hang around the sixth hole at Latrobe Country Club most summer days waiting for a nice lady named Mrs. Fritz, who couldn’t carry the irrigation ditch about 100 yards from the ladies’ tee. “Arnie,” she’d call out, “come here and I’ll give you a nickel to hit my ball over that ditch.” Over time the nickels mounted up. Big money.
The next time I played golf for any considerable sum—in relative terms—I was the reigning U.S. Amateur champion, and a man in love very much intent on buying an expensive engagement ring for the woman I intended to marry, a girl I had just recently met named Winifred Walzer.
I met Winnie the week after my Amateur victory, when Fred Waring, celebrated bandleader of the Pennsylvanians, invited me to play in the Waite Memorial at Shawnee-on-the-Delaware. On Monday evening after my practice round I spied two young ladies walking down the stairs of the Shawnee Inn, who it turned out were serving as hostesses for the week. One was Dixie Waring, Fred’s daughter, and the other was Winnie, who was unlike any girl I’d ever met, not just pretty and comfortable in almost any social situation, but also smart, well-traveled, and engagingly independent minded. We exchanged pleasantries, and I invited her to come out and watch me play. “Perhaps I will,” she said coyly.
We became inseparable for the rest of the week. By Friday night my amateur partner, Tommy Sheehan, and I were leading the tournament. This was quite an accomplishment on my end, because I’ll admit my mind was elsewhere, namely on Winnie and how I was going to hang on to her after the tournament. At dinner on Friday evening, sure of the direction I wanted to go, I reached under the table and took her hand and said, “What would you think if I asked you to get married?” Understandably, the question appeared to startle her. “Well, I don’t know. This is so sudden. Can I have a day to think about?” she replied.
“Not too long,” I said to her. “I’ve got places to go.”
Fortunately for me, she accepted my hasty proposal. To make it official, though, I needed to buy Winnie an engagement ring. But I was only seven months out of the Coast Guard and not making much money as a paint salesman, mostly because I was spending much more time playing golf than selling paint. So money was an issue. My boss in Cleveland, a happy soul named Bill Wehnes, decided to help by making me a deal: he’d pick a par-70 course, and for every stroke under 72 he’d give me $200. A 72 would be a push. But I’d have to give him $100 a stroke for everything over 80. In between I’d get nothing.
It was the kind of bet every friend likes to lay on you: a sucker bet. I’d have to play a great game to make a penny. I’d get nothing for shooting 72 to 79, which is pretty good playing. And I’d have to pay and pay and pay if I had a bad game. But I figured: What the hell; I was young and in love, and what is life like without friends like that?
Then he picked the course: Pine Valley in Clementon, New Jersey, which had a reputation—rightly so—as one of the toughest golf courses in the United States. It was a par-70 layout, but the famed George Crump layout was open for twenty-five years before par was bettered—by 1941 U.S. Open champion Craig Wood, no less. What chance did an amateur have of beating a 72?
“Pine Valley is the shrine of American golf,” Ed Sullivan of TV fame once said of the Scottish links–style course, “because so many golfers are buried there.”
So this was the course on which I was to “earn” Winnie’s engagement ring.
My start was not unusual: I bogeyed the first hole. I also bogeyed the ninth for an outward 36. But I really hustled coming home, and the fifteen-foot birdie putt I made on 18 gave me a 67. In the following two days I shot 69 and 68. Counting side bets an
d a pretty good run of luck playing gin rummy with Bill and some other friends along for the trip, I pocketed nearly $5,000 that I used to buy Winnie’s ring.
A couple of months later I turned pro for real, realizing that my dream of remaining amateur and playing for the United States in the Walker Cup wasn’t a very realistic proposition to a mediocre paint salesman with a young bride-to-be.
I think about that weekend at Pine Valley, and it probably wasn’t the smartest thing in the world betting money I really didn’t have. But it was another marker in my development as a golfer, on the heels of my U.S. Amateur title, that told me I might have what it takes to succeed as a touring professional. Under those circumstances, you sure learn a lot about your ability to play under pressure.
PLAYING BOLDLY
PART OF MY “CHARGE” mentality was an unabashed enthusiasm for attempting risky shots. It meant playing boldly. It didn’t mean playing recklessly, even if it looked reckless to most observers.
I feel I’ve never tried a shot that I couldn’t make. I relished the challenges, no matter how difficult, but I also understood the nature of the risk and the value of the risk involved.
My first legitimate memory of taking on a risky shot occurred in the Pennsylvania high school state championship at Penn State. Holding a slim lead, I hit a drive into the heavy rough with only a narrow gap through the trees as my avenue to the green. The smart play was to pitch the ball back into the fairway, and a classmate who was serving as my caddie suggested exactly that. But I saw that narrow gap through the trees and there was no way I was going to pitch the ball safely into the fairway. I thought to myself, “That’s a shot I think I can make.” So I selected a 5-iron and fired my ball through that opening. The ball landed on the green, just as I envisioned it. A modest gallery was following along that day, and I remember how enthusiastically they cheered that shot. That was quite thrilling to leave observers appreciative of my efforts. And it was personally satisfying to see a shot and pull it off.
And I never really changed the way I approached the game thereafter. Basically, I could not retreat from a challenge. If the chance was there, I was going to take it if it meant winning. And above all I found there was a sweetness in the risks I took while ignoring its dangers. To me, that was the fun in golf. Sure, hitting good, pure shots was rewarding. But recovering spectacularly from poor ones seemed ever more enjoyable to me over the years.
Playing boldly is a philosophy of play, not a style. Boldness doesn’t mean playing strictly with power. You can play boldly with chip shots and putts, too. My feeling is that boldness should be a liberating philosophy, not a confining one. I certainly never felt compelled to stick with one style of golf, even if I stuck with one attitude toward it.
I know how to plot my way around a golf course. And I did a fair job of it on many occasions. But all the same I had to inject my rounds with a certain feeling of, well, going for broke. I had to play with a sense of abandon, with full release, with an aggressiveness that was in control, but clearly on the edge. I could never deny my own nature, for I felt like if I was not giving it my all I was not playing to win.
I still recall a time early in my career when I didn’t play with my customary aggressiveness and it proved costly. It was in the 1958 Azalea Open at Cape Fear Country Club in Wilmington, North Carolina—the week before my first Masters win—and I completed 72 holes in a tie with a good player named Howie Johnson. I figured, given my form at the time, that I should be able to beat Howie fairly easily, so I didn’t go into our Monday playoff with much fire after lobbying unsuccessfully for a sudden-death playoff. I just wanted to play a nice easy round of golf, with the Masters coming up next. I didn’t want to extend myself, exert too much energy. I was out for a pleasant, relaxing round of golf. Bad idea.
Howie played poorly in chilly conditions and came in with a 77. And he won. I shot a 78 that included calling a penalty on myself on the 14th hole when my ball moved on the green. The truth of the matter was that I beat myself by having a different mind-set than my usual aggressive attitude. That cured me forever. I never succumbed again to the temptation of letting down at any time. Howie said afterward that he felt lucky to win with a 77. It wasn’t luck; he played better. But my approach to the day was all wrong, and I paid for it.
My belief always has been that you have to play every shot to the hilt, as if your life depended on it. That was my game. And I always found that the harder I worked at the game the more it relaxed me. Furthermore, the minute you stop going for birdies and pars, the minute you’re content to get a bogey, something happens to your concentration. You get sloppy in your thinking and the message seeps down into your reflexes. And then you’re in trouble, because it is very difficult to get it back.
Some critics have suggested that I might have won another Masters or two and a couple of U.S. Opens had I not played so aggressively. And I have thought that from time to time myself. But had I played less aggressively over the years, it’s possible that I might not have won any major titles. I suppose the honest truth is that my playing style probably caused me to lose as many majors as I won. Did I behave irresponsibly? Not totally, because I had something in mind I wanted to do. Am I sorry for what I did? Yes, I am. Would I do it differently? Probably not. It’s the way I was, and that’s something I have to live with today.
But putting the control of a tournament into someone else’s hands and not taking the action of being in control of the situation is much more of a gamble to me. I would rather risk losing any day than lay up and hope for the best.
You either go for the cup or you crawl to it. That’s always been my attitude—to take advantage of the tiniest opening to gain an advantage. That’s what “go for broke” means to me.
TROUBLE SHOTS
THE ENVIRONMENT IN WHICH we learn the game of golf has a lot more impact on how we play the game than people realize. For me, growing up at Latrobe Country Club definitely shaped my strengths and weaknesses.
Because Pap didn’t allow the members to practice chipping and putting on the greens, he certainly wasn’t going to let me do it, which is one reason my short game was rather weak in my early amateur days. On the other hand, I tended to be perfectly comfortable hitting shots from places where no other golfer ever wanted to be. It turned out to be an important lesson about the game: you’ve got to learn to live with trouble, and you’ve got to learn how to get out of it. In golf, as in life, you get some good breaks and some bad breaks, but if you’re going to depend on the breaks always going your way, you’re in for a surprise.
It’s because I practiced so much in the rough when I was a boy that I developed a realistic attitude toward getting out of trouble. That became my environment. I learned the intellectual process of looking for the various escape routes, of choosing the route that would best serve my purpose, and of picking the club that would help me execute the shot I chose. I believe this was the source of my confidence if I hit a poor drive. I was never fazed by any challenge that confronted me, and I rarely felt mystified by how to rectify the situation and get on the green or at least advance the ball enough to save a par.
Plus, no situation was too daunting to me because of the variety of things I tried. Experimentation kept me busy for hours as a young boy. I remember hitting a ball while standing on one leg and then the other leg, hitting shots with the club turned around or upside down, hitting from pine needles and leaf-covered lies and branches and twigs.
There’s a golf lesson in all this, but don’t miss sight of the bigger picture, which is that in order to prepare yourself for success, you have to prepare to encounter problems along the way.
PRACTICE
IF THERE IS ONE piece of advice I think is the most valuable when it comes to practice, and this applies from the tour professional to the beginner, it’s this: know when to stop practicing.
When you have done the work that you needed to do, be satisfied with it, and don’t try to finish it off with one more perfect shot. I
understand the psychology of it. You want to end on a good note.
The fact is, trying to leave the practice range with a great shot is a great way to work yourself into a rut. You might hit a hook when you didn’t want to. So now you want to hit another shot, and it also hooks. Or maybe it slices this time because you have overcompensated. In any event, it isn’t what you want to do, either, so you hit yet another ball. The next thing you know, you are wondering what you are doing wrong, leading you to hit another bag or bucket of balls, wearing yourself out and grooving some terrible habits.
It has never bothered me to hit the last shot or even the last few shots badly, not if I have done the right things up to then. If I hit a bad one at the end, my tendency is to consider it an accident. I have known a lot of pros who have to uncork a thunderous drive with their last ball, thinking that’s the swing that they will have grooved. But no, it’s the total quality of your work in that particular session that matters.
And it’s quality that matters much more than quantity. I loved to practice. You can stand at the practice tee and in your mind’s eye play an entire round of golf, except for putting, without taking a step. You can concoct a round based on how you hit a shot. Did you pull a driver? Okay, your next shot is a 7-iron from the left rough. Is your “next hole” a par-3? Take a 4-iron and try to stick a shot in there close.
There is nothing better than a well-kept practice area with good rich grass where the ball can sit down just as it does on the golf course, and with big green expanses stretching out in front of you. I call such a place my beautiful green challenge.
A Life Well Played Page 5